Nov 4, 2011

New varieties impact the tree fruit industries

New varieties have had an impact on how the tree fruit industries operate. While new cultivars have had an effect on cherry, peach and other tree fruit production, new apple varieties have revolutionized that industry.

According to the University of Illinois, there are more than 100 apple varieties grown commercially in the United States. Historically, Red Delicious has been and remains the No. 1 variety grown, by total acreage. If you went to a store 50 years ago and bought an apple, it was most likely that variety.
During the last 50 years, however, new varieties came along to grab a share of the market space and, in the process, change how we consume apples, said Jim Luby, the director of the University of Minnesota Apple Breeding Program.

Green apples?

Granny Smith is one of, if not the most, important varieties to come along in the last 50 years, Luby said. He wasn’t the only one who said it. Every other breeder and grower interviewed agreed that Granny Smith changed the apple culture in the United States.

“The Granny Smith apple introduced consumers to the idea that there were other options out there besides Red Delicious,” Luby said.

“Granny Smith was so completely different than Red Delicious,” said David Bedford, another University of Minnesota apple breeder. “It let consumers use the rest of their mouth. It opened the door to the apples we have today such as Gala, Fuji and Honeycrisp. It opened the door to better apples.”

How Red Delicious came to have so much influence on the U.S. market is not really a mystery, said Kate Evans, an apple breeder with Washington State University. It had little to do with eating experience and more to do with appearance and storage, she said.

Red Delicious apples have the deep red color that sets them apart from other varieties. They have those deep lobes at the base of the fruit, and just have a classic apple appearance.
When a person thinks of what an apple looks like, he or she tends to think of a Red Delicious, Evans said. They also store well, often holding good appearance and quality for 12 to 14 months.

“Red Delicious had too much control on the industry,” Bedford said. “There was misplaced emphasis on the buying experience. The same quickly happened to Granny Smith. It revolutionized the industry and then became a shell of its former self because there was a shift in growing it from the eating experience to the buying experience. It looked good, but keeping it edible became a problem.”

As a variety gets more popular, growers and marketers have to continue to provide a quality product to the consumer, Luby said. That Red Delicious would see a decline when these other varieties showed up was natural, because it started out with the biggest share. Other cultivars offered consumers choices, each with a different experience.

“A lot of people in the world still like Red Delicious,” Luby said.

Gala premieres

Another apple variety that has gained ground is Gala, Luby said. Gala was introduced in New Zealand in 1960. It is a juicy, crisp apple with a texture that was in demand. It was easy to grow and stored well, especially after the invention of SmartFresh and the use of controlled atmosphere storage.

Gala has proved remarkably robust in many producing districts around the world, said Desmond O’Rourke, an economics professor at Washington State University. Gala also has the advantage of being harvested early, so it can usually start at relatively high prices. From an economics standpoint, the introduction of Gala has proven to be a runaway success, he said. It quickly, in apple terms, came to be the second most-produced apple in the United States.

One honey of an apple

In Washington state, any variety that is not Red Delicious has an impact, Evans said. One variety that has had a major impact – in Washington state and everywhere else in North America – is Honeycrisp. It is what most people are planting now.

According to USDA, Honeycrisp apples have been rapidly increasing in acreage. From 2001 to today, Honeycrisp plantings grew from 300 acres to roughly 9,098 acres in Washington state, an area traditionally dominated by Red Delicious.

Bedford knows all about the impact of Honeycrisp, but he is admittedly biased – seeing as the apple came from his breeding program. In fact, 2011 marks the 50th anniversary of the cultivar.

“We haven’t made too much of a fuss about it, but it was 50 years ago this year that the original cross was made that resulted in the Honeycrisp apple,” Bedford said. “I still remember the first day I ate a Honeycrisp.”

The key to the Honeycrisp is the texture, Bedford said. There are two elements that go into apples. The buying experience relates to the size and color of the apples. The eating experience has to do with the texture and the flavor.

“The reason someone buys an apple for the first time is mostly related to the buying experience,” Bedford said. “Does it look right? Is it a good size? Is the blush appealing? And so on. But the eating experience is what will get them to buy an apple again.”

Bedford relates the texture of Honeycrisp to a really fresh, ripe watermelon. Demand for the variety has been strong. Strong enough, in fact to influence growing decisions across the continent. Growers in Nova Scotia, for instance, had access to government funding to update their orchards to modern growing systems, but they had to commit to growing high-profit, desirable apples such as Honeycrisp, said Larry Lutz, a Nova Scotia grower and former president of the International Fruit Tree Association.

Cherries

For cherry growers, the story is quite different. There are different varieties, but the staple varieties still hold the majority of the market share, said Greg Lang, a horticulturist with Michigan State University (MSU).

In tart cherries, more than 95 percent of what is grown is Montmorency. Historically, there hasn’t been much change in tart cherry production in the United States, Lang said.

There is change on the horizon, however, as studies at the Northwest Michigan Horticultural Research Center are testing how tart cherries are grown. The test planting will evaluate the dwarfing, precocious Gisela rootstocks currently used by growers around the world for sweet cherry production, said Nikki Rothwell, MSU horticulturist and the center’s director. There is little information about Montmorency and the Gisela rootstock series in the context of high-density orchards. For the project, Montmorency has been planted on its own roots, as well as grafted onto four commercial rootstocks: Gisela 3, Gisela 5, Gisela 6 and Mahaleb.

In sweet cherries, there are some new varieties to compete with the historical favorite Bing, Lang said. Bing is a bright red sweet cherry, and it has been the dominant variety grown on the West Coast for more than 50 years. The major growing region for Bing is in Washington and Oregon. It has also been grown in California, but the degree-days it needs to be successful aren’t consistent there. The difficulty in growing Bing cherries has opened the door to other varieties, he said.

But increased acreage for other varieties doesn’t necessarily mean a reduction in Bing acreage, Lang said.

“I wonder if Bing is really declining, or if new varieties are just getting new acreage in areas where Bing won’t grow as well,” he said. “We still have a lot of Bing cherries in the market.”

Peaches

There has been such a proliferation of peach cultivars that it is hard for anyone to select just one as a major contributor to changes in consumer tastes, said John Clark, a professor of horticulture with the University of Arkansas.

Twenty-five years ago, of the seven main criteria in the industry for selecting new peach varieties, flavor and eating quality ranked at the bottom of the list behind size, color, shape, disease resistance, cold hardiness and firmness, said Paul Friday, a Michigan peach breeder.

“I find ‘the way it eats’ to be at the top or near it, and hooray for that!” he said.

The biggest change in peaches is how they have been adapted to grow just about anywhere in the United States, Clark said. Everywhere from the hot desert regions of Arizona up to parts of northern Michigan and beyond have successful peach growers.

The top peach producing states are California, South Carolina and Georgia, according to the Clemson University Everything About Peaches website, run by Desmond Layne, a peach breeder and horticulturist.

Red Haven is still the standout peach variety, said Pete Van Well, a nursery owner from Wenatchee, Wash. Growers, breeders and nurserymen still use it as the model by which all other new introductions are judged.

by Derrek Sigler, Associate Editor